As its name suggests, Oaksterdam was an aspirational school and the popular image of laissez-faire, drug-friendly Amsterdam was its lodestar. Created by Richard Lee, the school offered programs in the economics, legislation and cultivation of marijuana while also catering to the needs of some California's medical marijuana users.

According to Dale Sky Jones, Executive Chancellor of Oaksterdam University, the legal grey areas that exist because of the contradiction between California's Prop 215, which makes weed available to those with diagnosed medical conditions, and federal law are more attractive to criminals than the sale of marijuana itself, which can be and is regulated.

"When you say 'No,' you lose any and all control over the market," says Jones, adding that the American marijuana market, likely worth $40 billion annually, doesn't appear to be overly-affected by law. "Alcohol prohibitions was ended because a group of people that didn't agree on much could all agree on one thing: The policy wasn't working."

The area's natural gifts are hard to dispute or ignore. The Triangle is lush and misty, full of independent farms, charming villages and looping roads running between deep forests and long vistas. No one contests that drug violence has been a problem despite the massive tracts of unspoiled land, but legal marijuana cultivation has also brought money into many of the small towns that dot the woods, creating an industry in a place that previously had none.

The fundamental problem appears to be this: While it can be legal to grow marijuana and it can be legal to use marijuana, there is reason to be suspicious that these communities care as much about the law as they do about profit.

Peter Arth, who earned himself the nickname "Mayor Juana" while leading the town of Dunsmuir in Siskiyou County, in the northernmost area of the state, hopes that local communities can step beyond the nonsense and pitch themselves as legitimate destinations for the Prop 215 community. Arth, who uses marijuana to combat depression and insomnia, moved to construct green houses in the middle of his town while he was in office, where he would harvest the herb he relies on. Though he admits this was a provocative proposal, he claims it was fundamentally about starting an "educational process within the community."

"The economy up here screams for sustainability and jobs," says Arth, who is also an attorney. "What we have is water and sunshine. This is incredibly fertile ground. Whether its marijuana or not, we need to be growers."

Arth was recalled and forced from office by a group he says shares a lot in common with the Tea Party, a group he generally disagrees with on social issues yet sympathizes with about the need to decrease regulation. Like many members of California's marijuana-friendly community, Arth is more concerned with local policies than with national politics and sees little difference between the Democratic and Republican approaches to what is more of a drug conundrum than a drug problem -- Michele Leonhart, Obama's DEA Administrator, is a Bush administration hold out.

"Within this community and others there is a hardcore element clinging tenaciously to the past even though it's gone," says Arth. "Strongly held fears came out when people grew concerned that this could be a drug town."

Dunsmuir and Oakland will need to decide whether being a drug town is as bad as the alternative before addressing the next riddle: finding a way to attract tourists without attracting the attention of the federal government.